Ala. City Eyes Developing-World Laptops

By JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer

(AP) -- If $200 laptop computers are good for kids in Peru and Mongolia, why not Alabama? Birmingham's City Council has approved a $3.5 million plan to provide schoolchildren with 15,000 computers produced by the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child Foundation, which aims to spread laptops to poor children in developing countries.

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Posted by zevkirsh 03/05/08 16:14

Rank: 1/5 after 1 vote

huge waste. more delusions that fundamental education requires computers. complete nonsense

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Posted by Sepp 03/06/08 03:57

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"Birmingham school board member Virginia S. Volker likes the idea of laptops for students. But she said Langford didn't think through the plan before committing millions of tax dollars to pay for the machines. Birmingham schools lack wireless networks needed to get the laptops online, she said, and the system doesn't have enough technology workers to train teachers, much less students, on the computers."

Maybe someone should tell Ms. Volker that these laptops have the capability of forming, among themselves, a mesh network (which means they can link up with each other) and that the whole school system could go on line without having the expensive infrastructure. Probably it would be enough for very few of these things to act as gateways to provide access to the internet for the rest of them.

Wouldn't that be a great experiment for a school?